Industry-academia gap is holding back India’s sustainability talent: Masters' Union
At the Mint Sustainability Summit 2026, Masters' Union's Anushree Poddar said India's sustainability talent pipeline is constrained by a disconnect between academia and industry needs.
Anushree Poddar, programme director of the PGP in Sustainability & Business Management at Masters Union, highlighted a growing gap between university education and industry needs in India's sustainability sector during the fifth Mint Sustainability Summit in Mumbai. Companies are finding it difficult to hire professionals who possess both sustainability knowledge and business acumen.
Poddar emphasized that the first challenge lies in the curriculum and the content taught in classrooms, noting that employers often have to choose between business graduates with limited sustainability knowledge and sustainability graduates with inadequate business understanding. To bridge this gap, Masters Union has launched a 16-month postgraduate programme that combines classroom learning with practical industry projects.
The curriculum covers a wide range of sustainability-related topics, including ESG, climate finance, carbon markets, renewable energy, circular economy, waste management, agri-tech, supply chain, business models, AI in business, and communications. The programme has attracted students from diverse academic backgrounds, including agriculture, biotechnology, life sciences, zoology, commerce, and engineering, with many having prior sustainability experience.
Written by urgent.news from Live Mint's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
